Snow Leopard Moms & Cubs Captured in First-Ever Video

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The dens of two snow leopard mothers and their cubs have been
located in Mongolia for the first time, with new, unprecedented
video showing the mothers and their young inside the den, a
conservation organization announced yesterday (July 12).

Snow leopard dens are difficult to find because of the
animals' secretive, elusive nature and the difficult, mountainous
terrain in which they live. Finding the dens is an important step
in learning more about the reproductive behavior and the young of
this
endangered species.

"We have spent years trying to determine when and where snow
leopards give birth, the size of their litters, and the chances a
cub has of surviving into adulthood," said Tom McCarthy,
executive director of the snow leopard program at Panthera, a
wild cat conservation organization.

Most of what has been previously known about snow leopards and
their young has been gleaned from animals in zoos, where litters
typically consist of one to three cubs. How big wild litters are
and how the young fair in the wild — where they are subject to
predation, disease, poaching and capture for the illegal wildlife
trade — was not known.

The dens were discovered in Mongolia's Tost Mountains, where
locals refer to the creatures as "Asia's Mountain Ghost."

A team of scientists from Panthera and the Snow Leopard Trust
entered the dens when the mothers were away hunting. They found
that the first had two cubs and the second, one. All three cubs
were weighed, measured and photographed and handled with extreme
care, according to a Panthera release. Two were fixed with tiny
microchip ID tags (about the size of a grain of rice) that were
placed under their skin for future identification.

The use of these tags and observations from the team can help
scientists learn how long the cubs stay in their den, when they
begin to venture out with mom and how long and often mom leaves
to go hunting.

A short video of the female and her cub bedded down in a
partially man-made den was recorded from a safe distance by Orjan
Johansson, Panthera's snow leopard field scientist and Ph.D.
student, using a camera fixed to an extended pole. [ Watch
the video of the snow leopards.]

Over the ensuing days, the team monitored the mothers' locations
to make sure they returned to their dens, which they did.

"Knowledge about the first days and weeks of life is vital to our
understanding of how big cat populations work, and how likely it
is for a newborn to reach adulthood and contribute to a healthy
population. A valid conservation program requires such
information, which this new development in snow leopard research
provides," Howard Quigley, Panthera's (www.panthera.org)
executive director of jaguar and cougar programs, said in the
statement.

Only around 4,500 to 7.500 snow leopards are thought to remain in
the wild. In recent years,
pictures of snow leopards from camera traps have also been
taken in other parts of the animal's range, including Bhutan,
Siberia, Kashmir and Afghanistan.